


you smiled (oh and then the spell was cast)

by Skowronek



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Writing & Publishing, Falling In Love, Hasetsu, Longing, M/M, Mutual Pining, Pining, Slow Burn, Writer AU, Writer Katsuki Yuuri, Writer Victor Nikiforov, Writers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-22 04:28:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13159275
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skowronek/pseuds/Skowronek
Summary: Victor Nikiforov comes to Hasetsu with one blurred photograph, a dog, and an unfinished draft of the novel he can't write.Yuuri Katsuki is already there.What follows is a summer of mutual pining.





	you smiled (oh and then the spell was cast)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Naamah_Beherit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naamah_Beherit/gifts).



 

Victor thinks: it wasn’t supposed to be like this.

Yuuri’s eyes are so very brown and so, so close – enough that Victor can count specks of amber in his irises, golden like maple syrup. Victor wants – no, he needs – to kiss him, nibble on the bottom lip and learn if it’s just as sweet, just as filled with past longing.

It wasn’t supposed to be like this.

He rented the room in Hasetsu to write, not to fall in love – or was it love or just yearning? – to finish a novel still incomplete, plot lines entangled in knots he couldn’t untie. His draft weighted his suitcase down, heavy, leaden. Hasetsu was supposed to help him.

‘Some  time off far away would do you good’, Yakov told him, something tired in his eyes that he didn’t even bother hiding anymore. ‘Go somewhere. Explore. Find something other to write about. Maybe you don’t even need inspiration, Vitya, just a trip. How long has it been since you left St. Petersburg?’.

Nine months, Victor didn’t tell him. A literature festival in Madrid where he was a guest speaker and got a sunburn. Victor doesn’t remember what he talked about; he only recalls the red, irritating ways the sun could get under his skin and still burned in the unfinished seventh chapter of his stupid draft.

So he took out his old primary school globe, faded, with the map not up to date, the USRR looming on it with the kind of a strength that paled with memory. And then he took out his darts, also primary school and long unused, and somehow it turned out like this: the fate pointed him towards Hasetsu. So here he was, Makka in tow, the book – a pain in his neck. And where he expected lulls of uninspired evenings and walks to pretend he was clearing his head, what Victor now finds is longing.

It’s Victor’s own fault for not checking who runs Hasetsu’s Yutopia; his own fault for booking a room at the place that scored the highest on TripAdvisor. He came in brought by promises of the most delicious food in town and baths to die for. He stays for the eyes full of light and a voice like dark chocolate.

Yuuri Katsuki keeps a routine that Victor learns early. He mostly keeps to the kitchen; in the evenings, his sister Mari takes over and Yuuri is gone, Victor doesn’t know where, but God, what would he give to learn. This is when Victor does more writing and less pining, safe in the corner of the inn, lost in the noise of the football match on TV. He finds it easier to write when there are noisy people around. Less alone, less lonely.

 

___

 

Days pass quicker than the pages of Victor’s incomplete document. Yuuri serves him breakfast, and Victor imagines lingering glances, lingering fingers, lingering feelings. None of them are real – he knows. He has a vivid imagination. It has led him places.

‘Just ask him out, for god’s sake’, Chris tells him. It’s just Skype; his voice, static, creaks like it would never do had Victor chosen to visit Switzerland instead. ‘Why are you like this?’.

‘I don’t even know if he likes men’, Victor whines into Makkachin’s soft fur. He tries not to think about the blurred photograph he stares at when the nights get too dark. There is a smear on his glasses and he squints to see Chris better. As far as he knows, Yuuri Katsuki likes dogs and cropped jeans and walking with bare ankles. All of these things do things to Victor.

‘Then find out’, Chris says, and maybe for him, it’s really just this simple. ‘What else do you have to do?’.

Victor tries to glare, but even this falls short.

‘Write a book?’, he says.

Chris gives him a smile that knows too much, understands too much, and Victor feels like he’s not enough.

‘Oh, Vitya’, he just says, ‘and this has been going _how,_ exactly? It’s not a change of scenery you need. It’s a change of heart’.

They disconnect soon after. Victor doesn’t go offline. He browses the net mindlessly, heartlessly, until the moon sneaks into his room and casts light on Makka’s snoring form. He doesn’t tell Chris what he’s long known – he’s already had a change of heart, a year before during his book tour, during a literature festival in Sochi that he doesn’t remember either; all he can recall are eyes warm like maple syrup and music he hasn’t heard since, a memory too foggy for his tastes, incomplete like the same draft he’d love to burn, only it wasn’t even written on paper and so he couldn’t.

He doesn’t write a word that week.

 

___

 

Days roll into a never-ending cycle of wake up, eat, pine, stare, repeat. The routine is nowhere near comforting. Yakov calls; Victor keeps their conversations short, blames it on Yakov’s phone bill. They both know it’s not the real reason he disconnects. It’s as fake as it can get, just like Victor’s novel.

Yuuri begins to leave him smiles: shy, fleeting things like butterflies. They fly straight into Victor’s heart and he thinks _oh,_ so that’s how it felt for his protagonists in his novels. Victor lingers more in the common areas of Yutopia and less in his room. He gives smiles back, warm, heart-shaped, full-hearted.

‘You’re scaring him off’, Chris says all the way from Genève, where he’s got a husband and a cat and doesn’t even remember what it’s like to have his heart ache for things unknown. ‘Take it slow’.

‘I can’t take it slower’, Victor says. Chris just shakes his head; Victor won’t tell him it’s not only the weeks he’s been here, it may have been months, but he’s not sure – and a part of him, a bit possessive, a bit secretive, wants to keep it just for himself.

He’s not even sure about the Sochi banquet. There was so much champagne, more sparkles than words in Victor’s goddamn novel. He’s not even sure – but there’s no other way it could be: whose eyes could contain this much starlight? Victor’s not even sure, but he thinks that his heart remembers.

 _I’m changing the title,_ he texts Yakov one morning. Yuuri’s left him a smile so beautiful that Victor’s knees are weak, his soul wanting. _I’m gonna call it Déjà vu._

 _Are you sure?,_ Yakov replies back from a few time zones in the past.

 _No,_ Victor replies, because he’s not sure of so many things. _Yes,_ he texts back a few moments after. Yuuri’s smiled at him again.

 

___

 

Victor’s wrapped in a blanket, dusk making him sleepy even as the glare of his laptop illuminates his face. Even with his glasses, his eyes sting.  The inn is suddenly too loud, but he’s afraid of silence; writing outside becomes a compromise he’s prepared to despise. Nights in Hasetsu are cool, he’s beginning to learn. He wishes for Makka’s soft fur and maybe a mug of hot cocoa.

‘I thought you might need those’, a voice sounds on his right, soft and unsure. Japanese does curious things to one’s English, Victor learns; the sounds travel straight to the place in Victor which is full of pining.

Yuuri’s hair is so dark in the dusk, so dark, and so are his eyes; Victor can no longer see the specks of gold in them. He finds that he doesn’t mind.

‘Pardon?’, he says. His voice is awkward – unlike him; he’s heard so many times he has a presence. It leaves him now, hopeless, breathless.

‘Gloves’, Yuuri says. He pushes them towards Victor, unsure. Victor thinks: it wasn’t supposed to go like this; he doesn’t remember that much, but there were movements so fluid, so languid, that they will never leave his memory. ‘You – you seemed a bit cold, and you’re writing’.

‘Thank you’, Victor says. He puts them on, if only to gain some time. Words are tight in his throat, even tighter than in his document. The gloves are a bit too big for him; he wonders how they came into Yuuri’s possession. He could write, perhaps, a thousand words about them.

Perhaps – it’s a good word, he thinks. There are a lot of such perhaps-moments in his life. Perhaps he should ask Yuuri about Sochi now – Yuuri still stands there, next to Victor, calmly not even glancing at the white eternity of the laptop screen.

God, how he wants. And he hates this stupid book.

‘Thank you’, he says again. ‘I – I didn’t expect anything’.

‘It’s alright’, Yuuri Katsuki replies. Victor still can’t see his eyes, dark as it is, but he imagines the amber twinkle in them and he needs to take a deeper breath before he falls. ‘I sometimes sit like that, too. I know it can get cold’.

Victor moves his fingers, now gloved. Yuuri’s voice is tight, too – or maybe he just imagines.

He imagines so many things, and they lead him to so many places, but they take him nowhere.

‘Are these yours?’, he asks.

Yuuri’s expression’s veiled in the dark. Victor can’t see it – and God, he wishes he could.

‘After a fashion’, Yuuri says. ‘They’re a bit too big for me, but I bought them’.

Victor’s got an ear for stories. He senses one here – how could he not? – but it was a lesson hard learnt not to push one’s buttons.

‘Thank you’, he says, again. ‘I’ll return them to you soon, I promise’.

But first, he’ll get drunk and gayer, and will call Chris, and maybe he’ll even write a little.

‘No need’, Yuuri says. Victor imagines: his voice choked, his cheeks flushed, and he wants. ‘You can keep them’.

He disappears, footsteps soft like a dancer’s, before Victor says anything more. He stares into the night for a long, long while, and even ignores Chris when his phone buzzes, intent on calming his heartbeat.

He’s sure, he thinks, he’s so sure.

In the morning, he fires off an email to Yakov, _I’ve finally finished Chapter 7. Already writing the next one._

 

____

 

Mari Katsuki notices him two nights later when she steps out of Yutopia. It’s already dark. Her cigarette has the same warm dot of light that Victor’s seen in Yuuri’s eyes.

‘So you’re one, too’, she says. ‘A writer, huh?’.

Victor’s good at words. He doesn’t miss the way she says it, as if he wasn’t the only author she knows. He’s sure, he’s so sure.

‘Yes’, he just says. He needs her to go away; the smoke of her cigarette gets into his lungs, too, and the scene he’s writing slowly drifts away from him. It’s as tangible as smoke and Victor will never catch it.

‘I figured’, Mari says. She crashes her cigarette, a long-practised movement that Victor doesn’t need to see. ‘Suits you just fine’, she says.

She leaves. Victor’s head is full of meanings. Strings of his plot come back to him, hesitant, slow, and he writes and writes until his heart burns.

 

____

 

Victor has just one picture from the Sochi banquet. It’s blurred, his camera out of focus; the worst picture his iPhone has ever snapped, the best picture Victor has ever taken. It’s a selfie, a drunken one, the kind you want to post on your Instagram but give up when the hashtags are too complicated to type in.

He can’t see them in the picture, not really, not too clearly. His own silver hair gets a golden hue that Victor knows is just a testament to bad lighting. Whoever is with him smiles and it’s brighter than amber, and even after so many months, so many eternities, it’s magic.

He’s so sure, he’s so sure.

 

___

 

It wasn’t supposed to be like this. Victor wasn’t supposed to fall in love. And now he has a novel to be written, a pair of gloves to be worn when the words he types are no longer his own, and a heart on his sleeve, singing, longing.

He takes to writing in the chill of summer nights. The soft gloves he wears bring him madness.

‘You know there’s still room in the inn’, Mari keep telling him, day after day as her cigarette envelops them both in wavering clouds of smoke. ‘You don’t need to freeze in here’.

‘It’s not freezing’, Victor repeats, day after day, typing with his gloved hands.

‘How is it going?’, Mari asks then. Yuuri never does, not him, not Yuuri. ‘The book?’.

‘Good’, Victor says. He’s gonna push for an amber-coloured cover; he knows Yakov will let him. ‘Good’.

 

___

 

Yuuri returns late one night. Victor’s wrapping up his eight chapter. It’s messy – he can’t even imagine the editing, he doesn’t need to imagine, he knows it’s going to hurt in worse ways than heartache.

‘Oh’, Yuuri says, ‘you’re still up’.

‘I’m writing’, Victor says, simply. It’s been so many pages and he still can’t describe Yuuri’s smile just right. It pains him more than the lingering glances which inevitably lead nowhere.

Yuuri shifts and Victor feels it more than he sees.

‘How is it going?’, he finally asks, and if Victor is surprised, he tries not to let the feeling sneak into his voice like a traitor.

‘Good’, he says, and it’s so strange to admit that truthfully, ‘I’m just finishing the chapter’.

The silence from Yuuri that reaches him feels like the kind of silence that always precedes grand things. But Victor knows: there are very few grand things about Hasetsu. Even Yuuri’s not grand – he’s a creature of softness and dust and ambers, made of illusions and smoke, the kind that you yearn for silently so you don’t scare him away.

But Victor’s not like that: he’s rash, and he’s Russian, and his heart follows the striking rhythms of the _barynya_ dance. So, ‘Sit with me’, he says.

And Yuuri does. Perhaps – and there we are again – perhaps Victor has misread him. He knows: words can be read in so many beautiful ways.

‘How is your writing going?’, he asks. There’s no harm in trying. There may be a hurt in trying, and a lot of vodka and Skype calls to Chris, who will buy him a ticket to Genève out of pity that Victor will accept even if he hates it.

Yuuri is silent the way ambers are: warmly, softly, with a beauty that won’t let you come too close.

‘Not bad’, he finally says. The hint of surprise in his voice tells Victor a long story of struggles he also shares; and perhaps a longer story of convincing himself that it’s good enough and words don’t have to be starstuff. ‘I think I’m getting somewhere’.

Victor smiles at him, hoping to share a look that is full of knowing. But it’s too late for that. Summer lasts long but nights still set in, unavoidable.

‘Me too’, he says.

 

____

 

In August, he’s got one chapter left to write and a heartburn.

‘You two got to talk’, Chris says, as if it were that easy. It’s the same tone of voice he uses “you got to write’, and it never works; Chris is as consistent a writer as you can be, diligent in ways unimaginable, and Victor would hate him if they hadn’t become friends first.

‘Shut up’, Victor tells him. ‘You never had to look at him and feel like you’re falling in love’.

‘You sounds like you’re the only one who’s ever been pining’, Chris tells him. ‘Grow up, Victor. Why is it this hard to talk to him?’

‘He’s a writer, too’, Victor says after a long while. It’s the most he can say about Yuuri. The banquet is not Chris’s to hear. It’s not even Victor’s, not until Victor can catch his memory by its strings and pull towards him until they wrap around him like a blanket, like a glove.

‘A writer, huh?’, Chris just says. Chris has always been better at reading between the lines than writing subtext, and it’s not different now. ‘So it should be easy’.

Victor has no answer, though. ‘Not everyone is like in your stories’, he finally says. ‘Not everything is’.

Chris doesn’t seem to look admonished. His green eyes grow curious, though, like a cat’s.

‘Do you know what he’s written?’, he asks.

And Victor knows. He has googled. He never told Yuuri that, and not even Mari. He doesn’t want to disturb the lull of Yutopia with his wanting more than he already has, even if the gloves burn his hands whenever he puts them on, even if he wants to kiss Yuuri more than he wants to write.

‘Do you know that one short story collection that everyone talked about two years ago?’, he says instead.

Chris’s eyes grow wide behind his round glasses.

‘ _A Name For That Emotion’,_ he whistles. ‘Yuuri Katsuki? No way. Really?’.

‘Really’, Victor says, because what more can he say? His own copy of the collection is left back in St. Petersburg. Dust must already cover the paper, but Victor knows those words by heart, anyway.

And Chris smirks like only Chris can, a Cheshire cat with a heart of gold and a smirk that brings trouble.

‘Find a name for that emotion, then’, he just chuckles and disconnects, and Victor may hate him just a little bit, but when he pulls up his draft and writes, words flow like they rarely do.

 

___

 

‘What are you writing?’, he asks Yuuri two days later. Somehow it’s natural to ask this now and not before. Victor doesn’t quite understand how it works. It’s enough that it does.

Yuuri’s back from whatever place he goes to at nights, a bit flushed in the warm light of the inn. Victor’s glad. He can count the specks of amber in Yuuri’s eyes.

‘I – nothing yet’, he answers after a while. ‘I’m not writing anything. I’m  - I’m dancing it first’.

‘Dancing’ Victor repeats. His tongue is wooden, for reasons entirely different than Yuuri seems to think.

‘Oh no’, he says, ‘forget I said that’.

‘What do you dance?’, Victor asks. He has to imagine – the movement, sharp and fluid, the music, the eyes half-closed and lost in the story.

‘Ballet’, the answer finally comes. Yuuri looks – embarrassed, Victor would say. Unsure.

Victor knows how to be unsure: the photograph on his phone can prove that well enough.

‘If your dancing is half as honest as your prose’, he says and watches as a blush blossoms on Yuuri’s face, ‘then it must be beautiful’.

 

___

 

They begin to walk along the beach early, Makkachin running ahead, early enough that their walks are short so that Yuuri can return to his work on time.

‘I enjoy helping out’, he just says, when Victor doesn’t understand – Yuuri has the money, he thinks, to write full-time. But Victor has never had a family who cared for him the way the Katsukis care for Yuuri; and he’s never drawn any joy from physical labour, not the way he does from the sound of his fingers typing in a steady, comforting rhythm. It’s just one of the things that are so beautiful about Yuuri, so he cherishes it all the same.

So they walk. They talk. Victor enjoys the way Yuuri’s eyes change colours in sunlight. More than once he lets his hand brush against Yuuri’s, and more than once he apologises and takes it away, and more than once it hurts more than it was supposed to.

At nights, they start to write together. Yuuri’s soft, still unsure; he writes on paper, the old-fashioned way that charms Victor more than he cares to admit. Victor’s typing, though – it grows desperate. He knows: this story is coming to an end soon.

 

___

 

‘I’d like to show you something’, he says one day when August runs out of its days. It’s almost nightfall. The chill and the seaside wind and Victor’s own heart make him put the gloves on. They still don’t fit; it still doesn’t matter.

‘It’s finished’, Yuuri says, his eyes – Victor imagines – full of wonder. His voice is tender like the night.

‘Not yet’, Victor says. He goes to the first page and writes two words, very simple, _To Yuuri,_ because so many words flow in them that they don’t need many more.

‘Really?’, Yuuri asks.

‘It’s always been yours’, Victor replies. ‘Ever since the Sochi banquet’.

Yuuri is silent – so silent that Victor thinks he may walk away and he will never see the specks of amber.

Amber, he knows, burns easily;  and he’s afraid Yuuri’s burning.

But then Yuuri takes his hand.

‘I got you the gloves after the banquet’, he says, ‘you looked cold back there, at night. You were gone before I could give them to you’.

‘I wasn’t sure that was you’, Victor says, ‘and then I didn’t know if you knew. You never talk’.

Yuuri nods, eyes wide, face serious.

‘I don’t talk. I write. I dance instead’.

And perhaps Victor wants to kiss him – and perhaps there is no _perhaps_ this time. He’s sure.

He’s written about his longing.

 

**Author's Note:**

> So... that was supposed to be a prompt for [Naamah_Beherit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Naamah_Beherit/pseuds/Naamah_Beherit) on tumblr. It was supposed to be maybe 300 words, and the prompt went like this: "Viktor spills out about the Sochi banquet and his crush on Yuuri during the summer of mutual pining".
> 
> Needless to say, I got carried away ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯
> 
> The title comes from Etta James' _At Last_ , and there's a F.S. Fitzgerald reference I couldn't help but make. The barynya dance that was mentioned in one line is kinda fast and involves lots of jumping. 
> 
> I'm on [tumblr](http://kaja-skowronek.tumblr.com).


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